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Conventional navigation systems such as Google & Co rely on road networks in metropolitan areas, motorways, and busy roads. They offer a simple and standardised product that is designed to show drivers a quick and standardised route. However, these systems often lack the flexibility and personalisation options that are important to travellers.
If you are looking for a round trip with cultural highlights, want to swap the motorway for a coastal road or take a customised sightseeing tour with your partner on a Saturday afternoon, conventional navigation systems often reach their limits. For all those who expect more from their navigation system than just the fastest route from A to B, the ESA BIC Northern Germany startup Bareways has now developed a software solution that takes a variety of factors into account when routing.
Tour Planning & Customized Driving Experience
“Bareways specialises in highly customisable, data-driven route planning with the aim of offering unique emotional mobile experiences,” says CEO Moritz von Grotthuss. And it does so by taking into account digital map information, points of interest, weather forecasts, traffic data and satellite images. The highlight: the collected information is provided to the navigation system together with individual criteria from the driver’s user profile. The result is even more reliable, safe global routing tailored to the driver – not only in well-mapped cities, but also in rural areas.
Scenic Routing
Where can I find particularly beautiful routes? How can I see and experience places that interest me along the way? Which areas with flooding, snowfall, rain, or danger of slippery roads can be avoided? Allergy sufferers are shown regions with a high pollen count and parents can choose a child-friendly rest area with play facilities or a lake nearby. Where can I find a charging station next to a nice café and not in the middle of an industrial estate? – It’s not just about the fastest route from A to B. Drivers and vehicle types are very individual. Do I want to be fast/sporty/safe or a tourist? Am I lover of contemporary art and want to stop off at the documenta in Kassel on my way from Hamburg to Frankfurt? At Bareways, people take centre stage. Customers can favour certain environments or road characteristics, e.g. driving through forests, parallel to rivers or coastlines, choosing winding routes or including certain points of interest such as restaurants, sports, or culture in the route. The keyword here is scenic routing. “We use data to offer people a better driving experience. This is particularly interesting for customers in the premium segment, but ultimately everyone wants to have a good mobility experience,” summarises Moritz von Grotthuss, Bareways’ Unique Selling Point (USP), “which means that we will be present in all vehicle classes in the medium term.”
Scenic Routing with selected environmental components to customise the route according to your own wishes (© Bareways).
The Startup
Moritz von Grotthuss (CEO) and Sascha Clement (CTO) founded Bareways in Lübeck in 2019. The two founders already had a successful exit together with their previous start-up called gestigon and both have 12 years of automotive experience. Bareways is financed by automotive-related family offices and business angels, and the state of Schleswig-Holstein is also involved via MBG SH. Bareways has also been part of ESA BIC Northern Germany since 2024. The team has now grown to 15 people – 13 of whom are engineers – and are all mobility enthusiasts.
Immersive 3D maps components (© Bareways).
Sales and marketing
The Lübeck-based startup’s product is based on artificial intelligence (AI), in particular machine and deep learning, which is used not only to combine open-source map and weather data, but also Copernicus satellite data, which can be used to recognise vegetation, road surfaces and road quality, for example. “Our customers today include premium and sub-premium car manufacturers who want to provide their customers – i.e. the drivers – with corresponding premium functions in the area of driving experiences,” says Moritz von Grotthuss. Bareways is distributed purely B2B via licence agreements with car manufacturers. “Our customers are car manufacturers who integrate our services into their overall solution. Bareways then no longer appears as a name,” Moritz continues.
Customers: From sports cars to e-vehicle manufacturers
The biggest success so far? The startup has won two car manufacturers who have already integrated the Bareways Routing Service into their commercial navigation systems. For the first customer, a well-known sports car manufacturer, Bareways offers round trips or journeys from A to B that emphasise the mobility experience and driving pleasure. The second customer is an e-vehicle manufacturer. Moritz von Grotthuss: “We help this OEM manufacturer to calculate ranges and expected consumption so that the journey is as environmentally friendly as possible. This includes being able to incorporate temperatures, gradients and bends into the algorithms.” Both customers are already so enthusiastic about the Bareways solution that they are talking about having the entire navigation system run via Bareways in the future. “A motorbike OEM is set to follow this year and talks are already underway with other car manufacturers,” reveals Moritz.
The Bareways team is constantly optimising its software solution and is already working on further use cases in the areas of e-mobility, logistics, assisted driving and autonomous vehicles.
The Bareways software can be used globally and was used by drivers from over 150 countries in the fourth quarter of 2023. Several million kilometres of routes are calculated every month and at its peak – after a viral post on social media – there were over 75,000 user enquiries per day. And how does Bareways intend to further develop and expand its technology and services through incubation in the ESA BIC Northern Germany? “We hope to learn even more about the use of satellite data through the programme and the connection to ESA,” explains Moritz von Grotthuss, “because the fact is – we can only obtain a lot of necessary global data through satellites.”
Find out more:
https://www.twitter.com/bareways
Watch this video to find out more about the ESA BIC Northern Germany Schleswig-Holstein, including an interview with Bareways CEO Moritz von Grotthuss.
#SpacemeetsMobility
About ESA BIC Northern Germany
The Incubation Centre of the European Space Agency in Northern Germany (ESA BIC Northern Germany) is headquartered jointly with the Bremen aeronautics and space industries association at the Bremer Innovations- und Technologiezentrum BITZ as well as the Digihub Industry – two of the largest innovation and technology centres for high-tech companies and startups in the German federal state of Bremen. The ESA BIC Northern Germany brings new startup opportunities to the region and thus strengthens the aeronautics and space sector in the German federal state of Bremen. AVIASPACE BREMEN e.V. supports the incubatees with its network, public relations work, and targeted coaching not only during the incubation period, but also afterwards as alumni. STARTHAUS Bremen & Bremerhaven is the central point of contact in the Bremen startup ecosystem and supports the startups on all issues relating to business development and financing. The ESA BIC Northern Germany is managed by Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO), an international networking and branding company for the European space programmes that also manages ESA BIC Bavaria with three locations in southern Germany.
Since 2021, ESA BIC Northern Germany has also been offering its service to space-related startups in Schleswig-Holstein. The Technikzentrum Lübeck with GATEWAY49, AviaSpace Bremen and AZO jointly operate this extension of ESA BIC Northern Germany. There are also plans to extend ESA BIC Northern Germany to the northern German federal states of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Berlin-Brandenburg.
Technical support of the ESA BIC Northern Germany, is offered by Fraunhofer IFAM, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence DFKI, Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar Research AWI, Bremen University, Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity ZARM, Airbus Group, ArianeGroup, AES Aircraft Elektro/Elektronik System, DSI Aerospace, and OHB.
